Feminists write about mental health

Darkest before dawn, or some other awful cliche

A quick warning: this post is going to discuss compulsive eating, self harm and alcohol. Please be careful if these topics are triggers for you.

I wanted to post about something that seems to be happening to me at the moment – namely, that my compulsive overeating is getting a lot worse, I’m drinking too much, and I’m considering self harming again. All of this has happened more and more since I’ve been seeing a new psychotherapist privately. We started working together in January.

The therapist, Diane, and my NHS psychiatrist thinks that what I am going through is a direct result of the work I’ve been doing with her. As if working through deep and difficult problems leaves a psychological rawness or exposed part of my mind that I’m trying to push down and keep away with food.

I don’t know if this is correct. Diane has stated that she wholeheartedly believes I can and will get better and stop having to use food to alter my mood. At the moment, my eating resembles something frantic, where I feel so trapped and on edge that I have to eat to calm down. Booze works better to calm me, obviously, as it’s a depressant, but I can’t drink at work so I use food instead.

That also might imply that I have some kind of control over it. I don’t. When I need to eat it’s like a tidal wave. I just can’t help but give in to it. It’s like a voice in my head telling my body to do things as my mind watches helplessly.

So, my questions are two:

1) Has this happened to you – have you ever gotten much worse in therapy before a breakthrough/getting better?

I’m so sorry to hear that things are bad for you. I was a compulsive eater for several years, as a teenager and into my early twenties, which we’ve now discovered was related to my depression and Bipolarity.

I saw a psychologist for a while and things did get worse – My main task was to complete a food diary, which made me concentrate on the food even more, so I felt bad, reinforcing the eating all over again. It’s like a wave, right? I know now, if I crave something, I can stave it off by doing something else but back then, it was all that occupied my thoughts.

Now, I am well. It is possible to recover and with help, you will. As cliche as it sounds, it quite often gets worse before it gets better. Annoyingly. I realise this isn’t much help right now…

I’m sorry you’re going through this right now. Yes, it is normal for things to get worse before they get better. I haven’t gone through this because I haven’t been going through the kind of therapy that stirs up deep emotions- mostly I’ve only had behavioral cognitive therapy. My last therapist refused to do psychodynamic therapy because she didn’t think I was stable enough to handle it. She says she’s known many people who have come away from that kind of therapy “bleeding” from it. Is that the type of therapy you’re doing? If so, that would make sense.

Is there anyone you have around to support you? (If I’m asking questions to which there are answers elsewhere on the blog, it’s because I’m new here and this is the first post I’ve read.)

It is possible to recover from an eating disorder. It is, as long as you attack the causes and not the effects. The direct cause of compulsive eating/starving is allowing yourself to be influenced by the media ideal and trying to use food restriction to sculpt your body to a shape that you think is more acceptable than the one you are now. All people with eating disorders from anorexia to binge eating have one thing in common: they all THINK THEY ARE FAT regardless of whether they are or not. The only way to help yourself is to actively seek out images and entertainment and sources of education and empowerment that plant into your mind the idea that your body is totally beautiful and totally acceptable as it is right now. Once you no longer want to lose weight, then the urge to binge or starve becomes easier to manage and with a little work (using only the latest research into addiction and not your ’emotional eating’ claptrap) the you can free yourself.
I know this because I have done it.